This week in search engines and social media: Yahoo launched a couple of new initiatives, Microsoft got a big fine from the EU, and fake Facebook profiles are proved more trouble than they’re worth, at least in some parts of the world. And in other news…

On Searchviews:

• Google wins a deal with Opera’s mobile browsers. The company also joined five other companies to build a trans-Pacific cable.

• Click fraud is up again, but it’s not really big news. What did make some waves was comScore’s click report, which shook confidence in Google and caused the stock price to drop.

• Microsoft adds a new engagement measuring tool.

• Google Talk enables chattier websites.

• We pointed to some coverage on search and the Oscars.

On the Web:

• Censorship in Pakistan led to a worldwide YouTube outage last weekend.

• Thanks to this latest Wired manifesto, “Free” will take over “Long Tail” as most bandied-about buzzword for the next couple of years.

• Yahoo is cooking up a new ad plan.

• The FCC is taking a serious look at net neutrality.

• Internet makeovers! LinkedIn (which also added a mobile version and welcomed Bill Gates to the fold), Google Docs, and Facebook all got a little prettier this week. Ask.com added more paid results to the top of its page.

• Google Health got official this week. Google also revamped JotSpot and renamed it Google Sites.

• Adobe launched AIR, a new widget platform.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Google, International, Legal Issues, Microsoft, Social Media, Week in Review, Yahoo!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.